My husband and I booked and paid for a villa for a week in Corfu, and invited our 4 daughters and families to join us at our expense.
The cost of the villa is £2,391. We paid £96 for insurance with Get Going. The villa company has requested a list of guests who are likely to be staying.
Unfortunately, in May of last year, my husband, who is 89 years old, was diagnosed with bowel cancer and needed an urgent operation, forcing us to cancel.
A reader is left out of pocket after she is forced to cancel a villa holiday in Corfu after her husband is diagnosed with cancer
The villa company returned £717, leaving £1674 due, which we claimed on our travel insurance.
After looking at a list of people likely to be staying at the villa, the travel insurance company has only paid £478 and says the rest of the group will have to claim on their own.
We paid for the vacation, so how can they claim without this being fraudulent, especially since all of the people mentioned couldn’t come?
E. and RC, Gwynedd
This style of group booking where mom and dad pay for the villa in order to take their kids on holiday is common – Mrs. H and I do this regularly.
I always make sure our kids have their own cover for medical emergencies, but is that necessary for booking costs?
‘Looking at contracts and cancellations, it’s true that individual claims should be made for everyone on a group holiday if they’re insured separately,’ says Martyn James, of the free complaints website Resolver, ‘but in my view that’s largely irrelevant in this case. the condition .
The consumer does not claim a person who is not related to the group, and it doesn’t really matter if there are 2 people or 200 people.
They have paid the full amount for the villa and are demanding a refund. I can’t understand how they can get such reduced salaries under these circumstances.
The Financial Complaints Service is taking a similar route, although there are no published decisions on its database.
A spokesperson says: ‘Consumers should check to see what their insurance policy says in the cancellation section. It usually says that the provider will pay for the costs of the insured consumer. If the insured pays for the entire vacation, its costs will be for the entire vacation and not just a part of it.
In short, if you are paying for a vacation for your family and your insurance policy says your vacation costs will be paid for in the event of a cancellation, the company must pay the full amount. On the other hand, if the costs are divided among several people, each person must claim separately.
But the key with family holidays is to look carefully at the wording of the policy, and if you’re not sure, confirm with the insurance company that they will cover all of your costs before you buy the policy.
The Travel Claims Facility, part of the Travel Insurance Facility, handled this claim.
She paid a total of £1,012.26 (after an excess of £200) for flights and a percentage of the villa rental (£478), which she divided among the seven listed as staying there.
TCF says the claim was properly assessed in line with the wording of its policy. However, she decided to pay her £1,196 as a gesture of goodwill.
It will also look at how to amend the wording of the document in order to “improve the clarity of this type of claim and prevent future confusion”.
You have your say
Every week Money Mail Receive hundreds of Messages and emails about Our stories.
Here are some About exposing our article Latest Santander Changes to Major 123 current account.
I was very disappointed to learn that Santander had lowered the interest rate on account 123 to 1 percent, when it was originally 3 percent.
Maybe it should be renamed Account Three to One!
BK, Salisbury.
Lots of “interest-bearing bank accounts” are not good. They often require you to deposit a minimum amount each month or pay fees to get discounts on things you wouldn’t buy anyway.
CS, Gloucester.
I have 123 accounts, £20,000 each. I’m going to close one of them, move most of my money into a good easy to access savings account and switch back to 123 Lite.
Bye, bye Santander – it was nice while it lasted, but I’m out.
MT, Buckinghamshire.
When Santander first introduced the 123 account, it was going to acquire millions of new customers who had moved on from other banks.
It’s fair to assume that millions will turn away from it now, myself included.
TK, Prestwick.
Santander should stop paying celebrities to appear in advertisements if it cannot afford to pay customers reasonable prices.
Stars like Ant and Dec are already millionaires. They don’t need our interest either.
GN, Scotland.
My wife and I have three 123 accounts between us, with £20,000 in each account. We’ll close two of them and keep £5,000 in the third.
I will put the remaining £55,000 into a savings account. The deal has changed, so we’re moving on.
BS, Surrey.
Most other banks only pay customers checking account interest on small balances.
Santander will still pay up to £20,000, so it’s worth checking to see if there’s much to be gained with the switch.
UF, Nottingham.
We applied online for marriage allowance in March last year, for every tax year from 2015/16 to the present.
He should have given us that refund and changed my husband’s tax code. I phoned HMRC in June, only to be told our order had not been received, even though we had a confirmation dated March 18th.
I wrote to them, as requested, on the 16th of June. On August 5, I received a letter confirming that the “tax return amendment will be effected.”
On August 12th we received a return for taxes of £43.60 and £44.60 by my husband.
On the 26th of August he received an order for £43.60 and on the 10th of September a refund check for £623.65.
On 17 September and 23 October there were further claims of £43.60. We dread another brown envelope popping up in the mailbox.
B, Southampton
The marriage allowance allows a non-taxpayer (taxable income of less than £12,500 in this tax year) to remit up to £1,250 of the personal allowance to a spouse or civil partner who is a primary taxpayer.
This can reduce the couple’s overall tax bill by up to £250 in the current tax year.
Transferred benefit recipients may earn up to £50,000 in most parts of the UK, but only up to £43,430 in Scotland. Claims can be traced back to April 5, 2015.
In your case HMRC admits it made a mistake. I fixed things up and canceled the wrong claims.
“We regret that the reader did not receive the high level of service they would have expected from us,” says a spokesperson.
By the way, the marriage allowance is different from the marriage allowance, which can be claimed if one of the partners was born before April 6, 1935. Both spouses cannot claim these allowances.
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